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Meanwhile, an invisible leak of natural gas is ongoing in the North Sea from an offshore platform operated by French oil company Total. Oil spills occur weekly in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. And the oil industry has resumed deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as well as prospecting in the melting Arctic, without adequate oversight or the resources to contain or clean up any future spills in the frigid north.

5 Comments

Nothing changes the behavior of most people until something really awful happens TO THEM. Oil spills? Dead animals? Ecosystems that take decades to fix themselves? Most people are too shallow to care about any of that.

Things will only change after a lot of cataclysmic disasters occur. Then those same selfish people will be angry that things were allowed to get to that point. What can we do?

I feel alone in this effort, but I have been successfully boycotting BP for two years now. I have not purchased fuel or even cigarettes or refreshments from a BP since April 20, 2010.
I only go into BP gas stations to use the bathroom, and I usually miss on purpose. I figure they could use some practice in cleaning up messes. (Joke)

Obviously, in the North Sea or in the Pre Salt, BP’s local production license would have been revoked on the next day.

In real capitalism (as in England) there is competition among the rich, and they are held accountable the same as staff members, i.e., investors are not risk-free.

For the ‘Other 99%’ of the US population, it would be a million times better if the US went back to real capitalism and European-style Social Democracy, and not remain an over-cushioned plutocratic oligarchy, as is the case of the US today, where everyone is afraid of the system.

Kennedy, being a true aristocrat in the most elevated sense, had a sense of noblesse oblige – the moral obligations of the elite – and tied to be a little independent. The concept of noblesse oblige is indispensable for civilization, for all economic or bureaucratic/political elites.